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UPDATE: As the change is now in force for some users, I have switched the navigation to the simplified one for the new system. Please check Navigation in the Help section if you can't find things. I also initially made small adjustments to the front page layout, but have now reverted to the old look until all users are on the new system.
COUNTDOWN: Just a reminder for people still using Monaco that the final switch to the new skin is due on Nov. 3. After that, it will no longer be offered as an option. Sorry. Nothing to do with me.
John Peel: Well, I bought a lot of Doris… See, it’s difficult to get the timescale right, because when you check the records, you find actually these records were from years and years later. But I remember buying Doris Day records, The Purple Cow – do you remember The Purple Cow? John Walters: “I never thought I’d see a purple cow…” JP: That’s the one. Even Doris Day buffs don’t remember that one – and there are such things as Doris Day buffs. (from Peeling Back The Years 1)
Doris Day (born Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff, April 3, 1922 - May 13, 2019) was one of the most popular female singers of the 1940s and 1950s, with a parallel career as a leading actress in Hollywood films, where she became the leading box-office star in the years 1960-64. Known (and sometimes derided) for her wholesome, all-American girl-next-door image, she began as a singer with a big band (Les Brown and his Band of Renown) before starting her solo career and achieving great success with Columbia Records between 1947 and 1967. Her repertoire encompassed classic American popular songs, nostalgic material from earlier decades, and novelty songs which were characteristic of the 1950s pop charts.
Towards the end of that period Day began to seem old-fashioned to the audience of teenage record-buyers whose tastes dominated the pop charts. She was rooted in the pop music of the pre-rock'n'roll era and, despite a British hit in 1964, "Move Over Darling", could not adapt to the post-Beatles era, and stopped making records in 1967. Her successful early sixties films also appeared out of touch with the new, open portrayal of sex on the screen in the second half of the decade, and for some she became a figure of fun, representing the conventional morality that the younger generation in the USA was rebelling against.
She retired from show business in the 1970s, underwent protracted legal battles over the mismanagement of her earnings and became an animal rights activist. In recent times her films have been re-evaluated by feminist and gay critics who take a less scornful attitude to her "virginal" film persona; her records too are still available in various reissue formats and she retains a loyal following. Her first new album for many years was scheduled for release in September 2011. In 2004, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush followed in 2011 by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association's Career Achievement Award.
Doris Day's son, Terry Melcher, became a staff producer at Columbia Records in the 1960s and was responsible for the most successful records by the Byrds, a favourite band of Peel's despite the hostility he felt after meeting them in 1966 at a concert in San Bernardino, while working for the radio station KMEN.
Peel began to revisit the music of his pre-rock'n'roll childhood in the Pig's Big 78 feature of his later shows. Several Doris Day tracks were featured, including "Purple Cow", which he recalled buying (see below). But he did show some respect for her in a 1971 interview with the underground paper Friends, in which he criticised Deep Purple, saying that both acts were in show business but at least Doris Day didn't pretend she wasn't.
